Saturday, September 24, 2016

Myth, Allegory, Metaphor

Tim Challies has a few relevant queries about the way theistic evolutionists allow their scientific opinions to trump scripture:

1. If the description
of the creation of the world is either just a vague metaphor for what actually
happened or perhaps some kind of allegory, where do we determine that
historical narrative actually begins?

My comments: The can of worms we open when we allegorize
the creation narrative is quite a bit bigger than we may think.

The theistic evolutionists I’ve
seen put their views on record wouldn’t draw a hard line at the end of Genesis 2
with the completion of creation (or at the end of Genesis 3 with sin entering the world) and announce, “The historical narrative starts here” even if they had logical and
textual reasons to make such a distinction. Having committed themselves to the
principle of “science over scripture”, they are just as likely to include in their “iffy” category Noah’s
ark, the Tower of Babel and whatever portions of Israel’s history don’t jibe
with the most recent archaeological discoveries because ... “science”.

In fact, if at any point they come across new data that
seems to contradict scripture, they seem uniformly willing to discard the Bible rather than examine the data more closely. As Michael Gungor puts it, “you can still love God and love people and read those early Genesis stories as myth”.

Further, where Challies frames the issue as “science
trumping scripture”, I would point out that it’s not genuine, observational science
the theistic evolutionist defers to, but rather current quasi-scientific
historical theorizing, which is a
different thing entirely. The list of ways in which scientists have been wrong over the years is lengthy; the list of ways in which the scientific method has
become politicized and riddled with outright fraud is even longer; and the much-lauded process of peer-review in which many place
their confidence often turns out to be not much more than glorified proofreading.

The notion that Christians must concede whatever today’s
scientists postulate in order to remain relevant is based more on
fear than fact, and ascribes a gravity and finality to a comparatively small set of assertions about
origins that they don’t deserve and haven’t yet earned.

2. If we hold to
evolution we have no way of knowing if, how or why Adam is our federal head.
Was he perhaps the first person who was truly a sentient being? Was he the
first person to whom the moral law was given? Did God somehow intervene in his
life to give him something that made him human while the rest of the species went on as animals?

My comments: Challies’ question is a good one. But again,
unwillingness to defend Genesis often goes hand in hand with a reluctance to
defend other parts of scripture, including the New Testament. People who think
Paul’s instructions to the Corinthians are to be interpreted culturally do not
seem the least bit persuaded by the arguments Paul makes from the creation order and from Genesis 3. An allegorical interpretation of the early chapters of Genesis makes such
things even easier to dismiss.

If a Christian is untroubled by the teaching that his
Saviour wrongly believed in the existence of mythical people like Noah, why would he be concerned about whether the doctrine of Adam’s federal headship can survive an allegorical Genesis?

3. How did sin and
death come into the world?

My comments: Paul says, “Sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin”. All theistic evolutionists are compelled to deny something about this verse,
whether it is by arguing that sin did not actually come into the world through one
individual, or by arguing that death existed prior to Adam (assuming he existed
at all).

“But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many
died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free
gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many.”

That’s pretty significant to your salvation and mine. If “many”
did not actually die “through one man’s trespass” but through some other
unstated mechanism, how can we be confident the “free gift by the grace of that
one man Jesus Christ abounded for many”? For the theistic evolutionist, truth
and error (sorry, “allegory”) exist in scripture not just in the first few chapters but side-by-side all the way through.

A literal interpretation of Genesis 3 and salvation
theology are inextricably bound together in the New Testament. You may try to tease
them apart if you wish.